21–24 October 1865
This sketch was part of Clemens' daily letter to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. The Enterprise printing is lost, and the sketch is preserved only in the San Francisco Examiner for 30 November 1865, which attributed it to the “S. F. Cor. Virginia Enterprise.” Clemens' allusion to the San Francisco city and county elections “yesterday” shows that he wrote the letter on October 19. It was probably published in the Enterprise shortly thereafter, between October 21 and 24.
Like “Captain Montgomery” (no. 161), published in the Enterprise three months later, this sketch draws upon Clemens' memories of piloting days. Although it cannot now be demonstrated, it seems very likely that Clemens knew Robert Roach, carpenter of the Aleck Scott and the alleged author of this grotesque means of “circumventing” Democrats. Clemens' own account in Life on the Mississippi, especially chapters 13 through 15, leaves little doubt that he was a cub pilot on the Aleck Scott. And certainly he was familiar, by report and by direct experience, with river-bank burials. On 5 June 1851 Orion Clemens' newspaper, the Hannibal Journal, reported that steamboats were “burying their passengers at every wood yard, both from cabin and deck,” as a result of deaths from cholera. Hannibal itself was especially hard hit by yellow fever during the winter of 1849–1850, and it seems inevitable that Clemens therefore saw this practice.1
What Clemens made of these memories and yarns is, of course, something quite unique. It is particularly striking to find him drawing on his recollections of piloting days at this time, for on the day he wrote this [begin page 312] letter to the Enterprise he also wrote his brother Orion, saying in part that he “never had but two powerful ambitions” in life. “One was to be a pilot, & the other a preacher of the gospel.”2 Now that he had at last resolved to give these two ambitions up, he was already turning over the possibility of writing about the first of them.
Where did all these Democrats come from? They grow thicker and thicker and act more and more outrageously at each successive election. Now yesterday they had the presumption to elect S. H. DwinelleⒺexplanatory note to the Judgeship of the Fifteenth District Court, and not content with this, they were depraved enough to elect four out of the six Justices of the Peace! Oh, 'Enery Villiam, where is thy blush! Oh, Timothy Hooligan, where is thy shame!Ⓔexplanatory note It's out. Democrats haven't got any. But Union men staid away from the election—they either did that or else they came to the election and voted Democratic tickets—I think it was the latter, though the Flag will doubtless say it was the former. But these Democrats didn't stay away—you never catch a Democrat staying away from an election. The grand end and aim of his life is to vote or be voted for, and he accommodates to circumstances and does one just as cheerfully as he does the other. The Democracy of America left their native wilds in England and Connaught to come here and vote—and when a man, and especially a foreigner, who don't have any voting at home any more than an Arkansas man has ice-creamⒶemendation for dinner, comes three or four thousand miles to luxuriate in occasional voting, he isn't going to stay away from an election any more than the Arkansas man will leave the hotel table in “Orleans” until he has destroyed most of the ice cream. The only man I ever knew who could counteract this passion on the part of Democrats for voting, was Robert Roach, carpenter of [begin page 314] the steamer AleckⒶemendation ScottⒺexplanatory note, “plying to and from St. Louis to New Orleans and back,” as her advertisement sometimes read. The Democrats generally came up as deck passengers from New Orleans, and the yellow fever usedⒶemendation to snatch them right and left—eight or nine a day for the first six or eight hundred miles; consequently Roach would have a lot on hand to “plantⒺexplanatory note” every time the boat landed to wood—“plant” was Roach's word. One day as Roach was superintending a burial the Captain came up and said:
“God bless my soul, Roach, what do you mean by shoving a corpse into a hole in the hill-side in this barbarous way, face down and its feet sticking outⒺexplanatory note?”
“I always plant them foreign Democrats in that manner, sir, because, damn their souls, if you plant 'em any other way they'll dig out and vote the first time there's an election—but look at that fellow, now—you put 'em in head first and face down and the more they dig the deeper they'll go into the hill.”
In my opinion, if we do not get Roach to superintend our cemeteries, enough Democrats will dig out at the next election to carry their entire ticket. It begins to look that way.
The first printing in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, probably sometime between 21 and 24 October 1865, is not extant. The sketch survives in the only known contemporary reprinting of the Enterprise, the San Francisco Examiner for 30 November 1865 (p. 1), which is copy-text. Copy. PH from Bancroft. There are no textual notes.